'Overwhelmingly likely it's made in Wuhan lab': UK Ex-PM Boris Johnson on Covid-19 origin

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that he is convinced that Covid-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

The SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 disease, was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. From there, the virus spread to the rest of the world and turned into the worst pandemic in living memory — infecting more than 77 million and killing over 7 million.

In his upcoming memoir ‘Unleashed’, Johnson has said that Covid-19 was most likely made in a lab in Wuhan, according to extracts carried by The Daily Mail.

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Even though China and several influential quarters in the West have pushed for the natural origin of Covid-19, there is no evidence for the same and no animal has been found from whom the virus jumped to humans. On the other hand, there is a strong circumstantial case for the virus’ lab-origin on the back of evidence that has emerged over the years.

The Covid-19 outbreak began next door to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the world’s leading institute in coronavirus research. It is now known that scientists at the WIV, led by ‘Bat Woman’ Shi Zhengli, were conducting research on hundreds of coronaviruses, including the risk ‘gain of function’ (GoF) research in which scientists give additional characteristics to a pathogen that it does not naturally have — such as making a virus more severe and transmissible.

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Referring to such experiments, Johnson has said that it is “overwhelmingly likely” that the pandemic is a result of botched lab experiments.

“The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects. It now looks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab,” wrote Johnson in the book.

Johnson compared the scientists at the WIV’s lab to witches in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.

“Some scientists were clearly splicing bits of virus together like the witches in Macbeth —eye of bat and toe of frog— and oops, the frisky little critter jumped out of the test tube and started replicating all over the world,” said Johnson in the book.

Beside former US President Donald Trump, who was largely ignored because his messaging around Covid-19 was draped in racism, Johnson is the most high-profile Western politician to say that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese lab.

At the onset of the pandemic, however, Johnson had blamed the unregulated wildlife trade in Asia for the pandemic — as the working theory at the time was that the virus originated in an animal market in Wuhan. He had linked the pandemic to the “demented” belief in parts of Asia that “if you grind up the scales of a pangolin you will somehow become more potent”. With the passage of time, however, as more evidence emerged of risky Chinese experiments next door to the site of the first outbreak, he became more sceptical of natural origin.

However, in early 2020, the British government was analysing intelligence about an accident potentially setting off the Covid-19 pandemic.

In April 2020, a member of the British government’s secret emergency committee told The Daily Mail that the Cabinet was studying intelligence about a lab accident at the WIV involving risky research on manipulating coronaviruses.

Since then, over the years, it has been learnt that lab accidents at the WIV were reported time-to-time and Chinese scientists and their collaborators in the West had plans for making virus through GoF research resembling the SARS-CoV-2 which eventually caused Covid-19 pandemic.